Dating apps are great, they’re like an eye-catching tasting menu where you can sample a little bit of everything you like. Dating sites, however, are more like the trusty local restaurant where the waitress knows your name, order, and your favourite chair.

Tenuous food analogies aside, dating sites are where you go when you want a partner for the long haul, not just an ad break. And best of all, the days when internet dating was seen as, at best embarrassing, and at worst, cringe-worthy are long gone.

So, if your thumb is at risk of repetitive strain injury from endlessly swiping, check out these seven dating sites. We’ll keep an eye out for the wedding invite.

eHarmony

Best For: Curing Swiping Fatigue

Can something that sounds like a manufactured boy band really find you someone to get naked with? Well, cue the dramatic chorus chest-clutching: eHarmony will give it a damn good shot.

The site’s USP is its ‘matching lab’ – a patented pairing system that’s been connecting like-minded singles since US psychologists Drs Neil Clark Warren and Galen Buckwalter realised there must be a way to prevent the incompatibility problems they were seeing in couples counselling.

In 2008, the eHarmony algorithm was anglicised for the UK market (who the Oxford Internet Institute found date differently) but whether you use the app or desktop version, the source of finding a match is the same. Answer 149 character-based questions to have your personality, values and interests mapped against criteria such as how introverted or extroverted you are, how energetic, how ambitious, then get served profiles with similar personality patterns who live within a certain distance.

The Good: eHarmony shows you exactly how your compatibility is broken down – i.e. 95 per cent compatible in intellect, 21 per cent in athleticism. It’s then up to you to decide how important (or not) their preference for doing push-ups rather than gorging on takeout really is.